I am somewhat in need of a new laptop to take notes at school with . . . I also want something like a kindle (or reasonable sized tablet(?)) for e-books

Ultrabook:

11-14 inches 2-~4 pounds I have a little bit of scoliosis . . . so not too heavy a system, but not too light that I hate the thing anyway. I may want to do some light gaming on it (anything from about 2007 or before shouldn't be much of a issue, should it?) Less than $550 if possible (I'm sure it isn't considering the SSD) Good keyboard, no Chiclet sort of keys (?) - I somewhat hate and slower on typing on flatter keys. I do NOT want an optical drive What else should I consider?

Anyone of experience with the Acer Aspire S5-391-6836 it seems like a nice ultrabook, seems to have a good processor (i5). For the price it seems like it should come with at lest some bit of hard drive space (not only a SSD) or more RAM. It's light enough, good enough processor, decent GPU, if it's still purchasable in a few weeks/months I may try to get this.

E-book reader

Large enough storage (4+ Gigs I'd think) Reasonable screen size (5+ inches?) Reasonable battery life What else should I consider? I hope to use it for school textbooks so I don't have to lug those around, and at night before I go to sleep I can read some.

I chuckled when I saw the $550 price but then you picked one out that is almost $100 more than that anyway

Why not spend more money to get a nice convertible ultrabook so you can have a tablet and laptop in one rather than just an e-reader?

That Acer you picked out seems decent but wait until you are ready to actually buy to make your final decision. Hardware configurations change so fast that you may be able to get something better for the same money (or worse with that memory factory fire that we will feel the effects of for a few months I imagine).

Now if you still insist on getting an e-reader (which is any tablet under 10" - yea, my opinion but the 7" crap is an e-reader, deal with it ) I would stick with Amazon right now due to B&N looking to outsource the Nook and possibly sell it off. Any of the Kindles would do fine for you and i would suggest paying the Amazon blackmail money to get rid of the ads.

The best deal right now in this price range is this ACER. It is not an ultrabook but almost and still very light. It has the new Haswell processor, Intel HD graphics 4400 (Can do any older game and even new ones with decent frames) etc.